The Best Places to See the Eclipse

These are the best places to watch the Moon blot out the Sun’s light, during the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017.

Although total solar eclipses are visible somewhere on Earth about every 18 months, it is rare for the path of totality to cross exclusively through the continental United States. That last happened in June 1257. The next time will be January 2316. Another solar eclipse will be visible in the continental United States in April 2024, but it will not pass over as many places in the United States as the 2017 event.

The map above was developed using satellite observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. It is based on data collected on August 21 between 2000 and 2016. Areas where the sensors observed clear skies the most on August 21 are shown with dark blue; areas where the sensors observed the most clouds on that date are white. Clouds were the main factor that affected where the instruments observed clear skies, but it is possible that smoke or haze also contributed to reduced visibility to a small degree in some areas.